There’s nothing small about Sondra Ray. At 5’11”, she has the stature of a basketball player (indeed, she was that sport’s star at her high school in Grafton, Iowa), the strong bone structure of her Swedish / German heritage, a huge, engaging smile and a deep, earthy voice easily given over to hearty laughter. Her address book is even larger—she’s hung out with some pretty “big” people—Sai Baba, Hopi Elders, entertainment stars, and just about every spiritual leader out there. But here’s the really big deal: Sondra Ray claims to have met the immortal being honored in Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi — Babaji himself. Said to have materialized a youthful body in a Himalayan cave in 1970, Ray says he was accessible for fourteen years, until his deliberate exit of the physical body through ‘Samadhi’ in 1984. (It is believed in certain spiritual circles that the masterful Babaji now ‘comes and goes’ as he wishes.) She is aiming for mastery over death, too. “In order to get it about physical immortality, you have to master the philosophy of it, the psychology of it and the physiology of it. Babaji has given me mantras for longevity and physical immortality and asension.” Though she speaks about it very matter-of-factly, Ray says it took her two years to recover just from the sight of the being she considers her Guru. “It blew my circuits,” she says.
The internationally acclaimed co-founder (with Leonard Orr) of the 1970’s Rebirthing Experience is, if you’ll forgive the jargon—a trip. You’ve got to love a woman who says she keeps in shape by doing her mantra (chanting) yoga practice, “accompanied by a bit of walking.” You’ve got to respect someone whose name is associated with the New Age movement who admits; “In that movement I found it too easy to be a narcissist. We can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strenthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.” And though she’s considered one of the most eclectic spiritual leaders in the world today, Ray has ‘”Christian crossover” appeal: she’s certainly been reborn and has an abiding love for Jesus. She was on the scene during Mother Mary’s appearances at Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, and sought her in Venezuela, Spain and Mexico. A painting of the Virgin Mary, to whom she prays regularly, hangs in the ‘rebirthing room’ of her Marina del Rey home.
Having authored 15 books, Ray is grateful to her own mother, who was an English teacher, and to her typing teacher for being extremely strict: “I can type books so fast because of her intensity,” she laughs, ticking off top sellers Loving Relationships I and II, The Only Diet There Is and Inner Communion, and mentioning Pele’s Wish (about the Hawaiian Goddess). Her latest book, Rock Your World with the Divine Mother is a culmination of the understanding she has developed over the course of her lifetime. Ray writes in a forthright, sometimes child-like manner, recounting her own experiences and offering rituals to bring the power of the Divine Feminine into our lives. Realizing that the secret power common to the great yogis she studied (mostly men) was their reverence for the Divine Mother, she had an ‘aha’ moment. “The Mother is the Supreme Reality, the intelligence behind matter—She is Light itself.” Ray knew it was time to transcend the femininist movement and conceived the idea of “The Divine Mother Movement”. She has since dedicated all her work, which includes Loving Relationships Trainings, seminars on money, Sacred Breath Renewal and Immortality, to Her.
Unconsciously, Ray has been seeking both Babaji and the Divine Mother since birth. “All of my childhood I was building caves, mostly out of sticks along the railroad tracks; I was looking for a cave I could not find, so I built my own.” In college, she took up spelunking and explored caves, but gave it up because of the bats. She later explored lava caves in Hawaii ‘with more gusto.’ “I never felt satisfied until I found the cave I’d been looking for”—the cave where Babaji first appeared in the foothills of the Himalayas and the place where he installed the statue of Hairakhandesh-wari, a combination of the Hindu goddesses Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati.
Ray has taken her students to this cave, and says the energy is so strong they can stay for only 15 minutes per visit. Over time, she has conditioned her nervous system to tolerate being in for longer periods, and recalls spending a full day there. “When I came out I heard that a huge miracle, reported by the BBC, had occurred all over India. The ‘murtis’ (statues said to contain the essence of a saint) began ‘drinking’ the milk offered them. As platters of milk were presented, the milk would just disappear. People ran to get more; all over India stores ran out of milk.
While such miracles don’t happen every day (in fact, the ‘Murti Miracle’ is said to occur only once every 4,000 years), amazing things seem to happen to Sondra Ray with startling frequency.There’s the time she shed tears that shot straight out from her eyes towards a speaker who had moved her. Then there’s the incident when a woman she didn’t know called to say she had created a painting of the Virgin holding roses and that she could feel the heart of the Virgin beating. The painter, ‘Velvelee’, came to Ray’s chant group and instructed her to “catch” people after they touched the painting because, she said, they would fall backwards. “This we did for hours on end, because there were about 50 people.” When her turn came, Ray says she was “pretty activated.” “I felt the heart beating myself. Another “catcher” said she saw me levitate off the floor, but I have no memory of it.”
Such exotic experiences might relegate Ray to the ‘space cadette’ category, but solid credentials back up her healing work, as well as establish her as an earth-bound citizen. She received a B.S in Nursing (U. of Florida) and a Masters in Public Health and Family Sociology (U. of Arizona), and was trained as a Nurse Practitioner in Obstetrics and Gynecology, which helped her understand the profundity of birth trauma.
“There is often physical damage done to the breathing apparatus when the umbilical cord is cut before the amniotic fluid is cleared from the lungs,” explains Ray. “At the moment of birth, we form impressions that we carry throughout life, impressions that control us from a subconscious level. Sacred Renewal Breathwork (the term she now used for Rebirthing) can release negative preverbal thoughts. Ray thinks of rebirthing as “a mental bath” and has often gone into a spontaneous memory of her birth, or of past lives, hyperventilating and experiencing what she calls “Holy Spirit breathing.”
Ray has practiced the ritual of shaving her head, called ‘mundun’ in Sanskrit, four times: first when she met Babaji, again when her sister died, yet again when her mother passed on and during menopause. “I consider it a ‘youthing process’, she clarifies. “You leave your head shaved for nine months to symbolize gestation. It helps erase pre-natal trauma. Of course, it’s also a letting go of ego. It really stimulates creativity!” During the ceremony, the participant kneels before the barber (Ray notes that the one she employed looked the same in 2004 as he did in 1979) while a surrounding group offers the chant, “Om Namaha Shivai”. The sheared hair is caught by a banana leaf and floated down a river.
Since Babaji’s physical departure, Ray has, under his direction, embraced two female Indian saints, Amma and Karunamayi, with whom she spends time each year. “Presently, there is a reawakening of the sacred feminine in the hearts and minds of people throughout the world,” she writes, continuing in her frank fashion: “We need new paradigms.The old paradigms simply will not work much longer anyway. They are falling apart….give it up! Get on the bandwagon. Ride the horse in the direction that it is going!” That direction, in her opinion, is upward. “I always suggest people search for the highest. In spiritual life, this is called the principle of right association — placing yourself in the presence of those who force you to adapt upward.”
A great admirer of Mother Teresa, Ray reminds readers that she once said the only thing that should sadden us is if we do not become saints. “I had been telling people in my classes something like that, because the Bible says, ‘Be ye perfect even as God is perfect.’ Mother Teresa wanted us all to become like Jesus: that was the light she wanted to live and the love she wanted to reflect and express.” Ray was in India when both Mother Teresa and Princess Diana passed and says she feels the sadness of their deaths opened hearts worldwide, allowing a new vibration to enter. “It was kind of an initiation,” she says. “These two women made us focus on the power of humanitarian ideals.”
Ray has long been attracted to altruistic service. Growing up in a village of just 300, she remembers riding her tricycle, then her bike to visit the sick, poor and elderly who lived alone. “I always knew how to cheer them up.” She thought she was supposed to be a missionary and became a waitress to make money for school, then a became a nurse. But it was joining the Peace Corps soon after nursing school that was what she calls, “a real boot camp for world service!” Stationed in Peru, that experience got her in shape for serving in a way that could potentially make a real difference. “All this was long before I found the book Serving Humanity by Alice Bailey. I dare you to read it—it will straighten anyone out.” Ray is said to possess the gift of helping people move out of pain quickly and into the experience of the celebration of life. Commenting on what seems to be a popular fascination with media violence, she says she thinks people are attracted to pain so they might be brought to a place where they can heal it.
Such a place might be Bali, a culture that, according to Ray, “is clear on who is running things.” Having traveled the world for decades, she was so impressed during her six week stay there that she thinks it might be someplace from a different dimension (she recounts her impressions of Bali in her book Drinking the Divine, which addresses The Course in Miracles). In the center of every home is a temple, built before any other part of the house is constructed. Each family relates to one of seven temples: an indoor temple, an outdoor temple, the local town temple, the local district temple…until you get to the great Divine Mother Temple, which is on a mountain and which is where the Balinese government officials live and work! Families in Bali do puja (worship) together every morning, for about two hours before work.” Ray was particularly moved by a ceremony during which one hundred women walked in a row, “beautifully dressed in batik and carrying elaborate headdresses of fuit and flowers.” People ran to the beach, greeted the women and laid down their own batik cloths. Everyone on the island was doing this, laying the fruit and flowers on the batiks along the beach and praying for one another’s families. “That day,” remembers Ray, “ I received the knowledge of how to conduct the God Trainings Babaji had asked me to do.”
The God Trainings, which incorporate Sacred Breath techniques, became like a rotating ashram, taking place in power spots like Mount Shasta, California, Sedona, Arizona, Macu Picchu, Peru and Egypt. Asked how she managed to create a life of travel, Ray replies; “I just wrote books & people invited me to come. I only go where I’m invited.” Being exposed to so many different cultures has been a fascinating journey for Ray, who has been introduced to similarities in Sanskrit, Hawaiian, Peruvian and other idigenous languages. “They are very scientific languages that have been very carefully used. In contrast, we have accumulated many negative words [in English] and we’re careless about how we use them,” she notes. “You can see why we don’t create magic in our lives—people have no idea how words alter reality. We are not speaking or thinking positively as we should be; we should have learned in kindergarten about the power of our thoughts and how to use this as part of daily life.”
How does she cope when there is a disconnect between the bliss she is blessed with and the grind of daily life? “If there is a result I don’t like, I don’t go into blame. I don’t think, ‘somebody did it to me, or my mother caused this—I look at what thought I might have in my subconscious that created the result I don’t like, then I change it. So in a way, results are your guru. Find out what the thought is and apply some form of spiritual practice to change it. Chanting or meditation are practices I would do to correct it and stop creating the bad result.”
As author Marianne Williamson writes in the introduction to Rock Your World, “If there is a goddess whose name means “Awake and Hilarious at the Same Time,” she has incarnated this lifetime as Sondra Ray.” That’s a very apt description of this dynamic spiritual pioneer, who reminds and remands us to: “Be ready to change your point of view when a higher, better way is presented to you. Remember, you are connected to Divine Intelligence. Evolve! Advance! Ask yourself whether you are of any use to the masters or a burden to this planet. It is not too late to change. As Babaji used to say to us, “There is no saint without a past, and no sinner without a future.”